part of the process
by irnan
Summary: or, Jim Kirk is like gravity, in a way.
1. Chapter 1

_This is a disclaimer._

**Part of the Process**

(one)

Right at the outset, let it be said that Jim Kirk has never, ever been able to easily accept help from others. First there was Dad and his great sacrifice for Jim, and then there were Mom's absences in Starfleet, and between the stories and the long periods of loneliness and relative self-sufficiency in the face of his asshole stepfather...

Well.

But Pavel Chekov is seventeen and a half, green as grass, hopelessly young for this shit, and about as far away from Kirk at that age as the Enterprise is from Earth right now, which is a really, really long way.

"I just," he stammers through the end of his speech in Jim's quarters at almost ten o'clock at night, and Jim's just come off a twelve-hour shift and his entire body aches in unprecedented ways, but that is neither here nor there because, well, Chekov, and the way he's twisting his hands together in front of him and trying to look Jim in the eye but not quite managing. "I'm sorry, Captain. But I – I didn't know who else to ask. About. For advice."

"I understand," Jim says. "Take a seat, kid. Looking up at you is giving me a crick in the neck."


	2. Chapter 2

_This is a disclaimer._

**Part of the Process**

(two)

When Uhura broke up with Spock, as most people were firmly convinced she never would, Jim found her in the rec room. He'd seen Spock earlier, on the bridge, and his First had been... fine.

Completely fine. It had freaked Jim out a little, the calm with which the man had spoken about the break up and the dispassionate tone of his voice, and so he'd decided to turn to the only other person on board who knew without a doubt just what was really going on here.

And then he saw her, and it was a little like being punched in the face, because he'd never seen her so miserable. He'd rarely seen her anything other than either annoyed with him or composed and professional.

Uhura, when he sat down opposite her, gave him a glare that said she'd like to brain him with a pickaxe and grind his bones into flour to make her bread.

"What do you want, _sir_?" she snarled at him.

"Is this going to affect your performance on my bridge?" Jim demanded, making his voice as sharp and hard as he could.

Uhura froze up and stared at him. "I. What?"

"I'm not here to gossip about your love life, Uhura, and I'm not here for the tabloid exclusives," Jim snapped. "I want to know if I can still rely on you to do your job, or if you're too busy wallowing in self-pity to remember _what that job even is_."

Her whole body seemed to jerk after he'd finished, straightening and hardening. Someone had just dropped a steel rod into her spine, and the look she gave him was lethal at a hundred paces, let alone across a table-top.

Jim met it head on.

"I," Uhura said dangerously, "am more than capable of doing my job, sir. Thank you for your time."

Jim got up, chair legs scraping, posture stiff and official and voice dripping disapproval. "Very well, Lieutenant."

He knew it would take her months to properly get over it, but every time she'd look at him in future – and being on the bridge all day, she had to look at Jim a lot – that miserable lost stare would be abruptly, completely, replaced, and if there's one thing Jim knew how to deal with after being stuck in the Academy for three years without ever getting into her panties, it's an Uhura who hates his guts.


	3. Chapter 3

_This is a disclaimer._

(three)

Sulu teaches Jim to fence, and it's one of the best ideas Jim's had in a long time. He hates working out, all that sitting around lifting things (he did enough of that in Iowa, thank you very fucking much), but the Captain of a Starfleet vessel ought to be fit, so he gets Sulu to put him through his paces every single Friday.

They start out private, but gradually, as Jim's skill with a blade improves, the watchers arrive.

It's almost a year after they've started this little routine that Jim gets trounced for a third time that morning (it's not his fault, there were these alien spores and a lot of running though some seriously freaky fields yesterday). He congratulates Sulu, wry but genuine, admiration and camaraderie, and Sulu nods and laughs and mentions this girl he's seeing and halfway through the conversation, Jim blurts out, "You must be the best-adjusted person on this whole ship, Sulu, you know that?"

Sulu grins at him. "I make a point of it. At least that way Dr. McCoy has no excuse to threaten me with a hypospray if I don't take the pledge in front of the entire bridge crew and a handful of nurses."

Jim winces.

"Cruel, too," he says.

Sulu laughs out loud.


	4. Chapter 4

_This is a disclaimer._

(four)

Hikaru Sulu is indeed remarkably well-adjusted. He's so well-adjusted, in fact, that he could probably go toe-to-toe with Spock in the Being Unruffled Olympics. He's a pilot; he can't afford to jump at small noises and have anxiety attacks every time something goes wrong.

But when the transmission comes in, garbled and wobbly, when Uhura cleans it up and plays it again for the whole bridge to hear, Sulu finds his hands are shaking and there's a black hole opening up in the pit of his stomach.

_definitely unwilling to trade... locals been given misinformation... shot at... Jim's hurt... Christ there's so much blood... Ensign Chekov and Mister Spock unhurt... need immediate extraction..._

Hikaru Sulu has the conn, and his hands are shaking. Jim's hands never shake. Ever. He sits in the chair and barks out orders and always has everything under control, like he thrives on the pressure, and he always brings everyone back alive, if not necessarily well, but everyone knows that the 'well' part is Dr. McCoy's responsibility. All Jim has to do is deliver them to McCoy, and he always does, because he's _Jim_.

Jim's hands never shake. But right at this moment, Sulu's are.


	5. Chapter 5

_This is a disclaimer._

(five)

Captain Sal Warrington makes McCoy uneasy in a bone-deep way that must be rather similar to the way a mouse feels when confronted with a sleeping snake. She's sharp and professional and quick on the uptake, refuses to be impressed by the way the _Enterprise_ crew does their jobs, and she looks at everything on the ship with a ruthless slant to her mouth and a covetous gleam in her eyes.

Of course she does. The _Enterprise_ is the flagship of the fleet; everyone in Starfleet wants to serve on her, and every Captain wants a transfer to her gleaming bridge.

And yet, coming from Warrington, that look makes McCoy's blood run cold.

She beams back aboard the _Ulysses_ after the conference with Jim and Spock, and McCoy almost expects her to snap her heels together as she stands on the transporter pad. As he leaves the room, he catches a snatch of conversation between Scotty, who was manning the controls 'in her honour', and Sulu, who escorted her down to the pad with McCoy.

"... creeps me the Hell out," Sulu was saying. "Like a snake, cold and dead."

"Noticed that meself," Scotty agrees. "Pity the poor sods who have to serve with her!"

"Did you see the way she looked at Jim?" Sulu asks. "Like he was her personal fuck toy."

There's a side of indignation and anger on Jim's behalf in his voice, but McCoy doesn't wait for Scotty's answer. He goes in search of Jim instead.

Captain James Tiberius Kirk has shut himself up in a men's room on a mostly deserted deck several levels below the bridge. Presumably, Spock has the conn. Right now, McCoy couldn't care less.

They could be flying into an asteroid field, and he wouldn't care less.

Jim's leaning on the sink, hands gripping the sides, head bowed. He's not shaking, not breathing hard, not doing anything but standing there, and, apparently, staring into the drain, which is a drain like any other and does not deserve that much of Jim's attention.

"Jim," McCoy says.

"I hate that woman," Jim says.

"There's never been any allegations of misconduct against her."

"There doesn't have to be. She treats people like things, Bones. She treats her crew like nuts and bolts in the machine that makes up her ship, and she thinks of others only in terms of what they can do for her."

It's the eloquence of the speech more than anything else that tells Bones how badly Jim's rattled right now.

"Jim," he says again.

"My stepfather used to look at me like that," Jim says. "Not always. Not often. But enough."

Bones steps up behind him and lays a hand on the small of Jim's back. He has his own suspicions about the childhood Jim never talks about, the half-dozen scars scattered across his chest and back and hip in one case, minor lacerations that never healed properly. But this is the first time that Jim has ever so much as _hinted_ at... anything.

Jim draws a long, harsh breath. Then he pushes away from the sink and smiles at Bones, a faint imitation of his usual grin.

"She gone?"

"Yes."

"Good. Get someone to disinfect every inch of my girl that she so much as looked at."

Bones smiles. Doesn't answer. Jim stands there and looks at him for another minute or three, not making a single move to dislodge his friend's hand from his back. Then, at last, he says, "I know what you must be thinking, and you're wrong, you know. I'm fucked up, but it's not that."

"Doesn't matter what it is," Bones says. "Never did. Never will."

"One's as bad as the other, you mean," Jim says dully.

"You're still my Jim Kirk, I mean," Bones tell him.


	6. Chapter 6

_This is a disclaimer._

(six)

Remember that part about Jim never asking people for help?

Well, maybe sometimes.

"Chess," the Ambassador says. "Try chess, Jim. I know you play. I saw that set in your quarters the last time I was aboard the _Enterprise_."

"Snoop," Jim accuses him.

The Ambassador smiles a little, and Jim can't wait for the day when he can get his Spock to do that. Look at him like that. "It was not hard to spot, Jim. In fact, I remember you as having more personal possessions in your quarters."

"Houses and possessions can tie you down, you know," Jim says loftily.

"Jim," the Ambassador says gently, "you are on a spaceship. There are very few things you could be doing that tie you down _less_."

At least it's good to know that every version of Spock can cut through Jim's bullshit with the same ease. It makes him feel like less of an idiot.

So he bursts into Spock's quarters later that night, carrying a chess set, and just says, "Spock, tell me you play chess. Please, God. Bones is crap at it and Scotty doesn't know how and Uhura wouldn't play with me if I begged on my knees, and Chekov is on duty and Sulu is _nowhere to be found_. I need to play chess, Spock."

Spock raises an eyebrow. "I already know you spoke with the Ambassador earlier this afternoon, Jim," he says.

Jim stops in the middle of the room. "Oh."

"Quite."

"But you'll still play with me, right?" And he holds out the chess set and puts on his best butter-wouldn't-melt smile.

He doesn't get an actual, honest-to-God change of expression, but there's a sense of amusement and acquiescence in the room now, and Jim supposes that's a pretty good first step.


	7. Chapter 7

_This is a disclaimer._

(seven)

They have a... a _blow-out_ for Chekov's twentieth birthday. It's the awesomest party Jim Kirk has ever organised, and that's saying something, because he organised a few back at the Academy, and they all went brilliantly. But this one has an edge to it that makes it more awesome than all the others put together.

Maybe it's Uhura drinking Scotty under the table with the man's own rotgut. Maybe it's Jim and Sulu's miserable, doomed-to-failure attempts to get Spock drunk, because the idea of a drunken Spock is just too much to resist. Maybe it's catching Chekov making out with that girl from Engineering that he's been crushing on for the better part of a year. Maybe it's getting Chapel and Rand to teach him to salsa, which does not end well, and is probably captured on video by Bones and distributed across the entire ship within minutes of the end of the attempt.

Anyway, it's the awesomest party Jim's ever organised, even if he does wake up the next morning with a jackhammer going off in his head and a foul taste in his mouth, but he gets cursed at when he tries to get up to medicate himself, so Jim flops back into the pillows and lets Bones sprawl warm and heavy across his chest and tells himself he's not actually that hung over.


	8. Chapter 8

_This is a disclaimer._

(eight)

Joanna McCoy is anything but stupid. And she knows a thing or two about awful mothers and broken homes and family fights that never stop, so she knows better than to ask Uncle Jim about why he always spends Christmas with her and Dad, and why he never talks about his home. Nor would she ever dream of pointing out to him that the way he talks about Jo's family, like he knows exactly what she's talking about whenever she starts complaining about her Mom, is even more of a dead giveaway than him spending Christmas with them.

And it's not like she minds that he comes over; Uncle Jim is awesome and fun and super cool, and he once brought her back a real Klingon blade weapon, the name of which she can't quite pronounce, in a glass case from this one mission. It's hanging on the wall in her bedroom, and Dad disapproves of it so much it's hilarious to watch his face whenever he happens to glance at it.

When her grandmother sniffs at it and says in her smooth warm voice that _Jo's still too young to know about that sort of thing_, Jo points out that Benny Goodman's dad takes him shooting, and would Grandma mind about the blade weapon so much if Jo were a boy?

Whereupon a whole other argument starts, because they wouldn't be McCoys if they weren't fighting about _something_.

So Uncle Jim is just as awesome and cool as Dad is, only in different ways, and while Jo does have days – weeks, sometimes – when she detests the pair of them with her whole soul for going off and having adventures while she's stuck here in Georgia with her grandparents and the terrible monthly visits from her mother that always leave her feeling miserable and a bad person for daring to love her Dad more than anyone else in the world, as a rule, she _does_ love Dad and Uncle Jim. To death.

And Mom can just suck it.

Jo makes a point, every time, of meeting the shuttlecraft that carry the crewmembers of the _Enterprise_ back to Earth whenever they're on leave. Maybe it's silly – maybe it's a waste of money to make the trip every time with Grandma when Dad's coming straight to her anyway, but it's a part of their routine, now.

It makes her feel safe, knowing she's the first thing Dad sees when he comes back to Earth.

So here she is on the docks, waiting for Dad to arrive. He and Uncle Jim are always on the last shuttle, along with Mister Spock and Lieutenants Uhura and Sulu and Pavel, and Commander Scott who showed her how to take apart a communicator once and turn it into a portable radio, complete with earphones and volume control.

But loads of people call out to her on their way past, wave and smile and nod at her, and Jo's occupied with waving back and calling out and blowing a kiss to Nurse Chapel, who takes care of her Dad whenever Uncle Jim can't because he's busy blowing things up, and registering out of the corner of her eye that the blonde lady leaning on the railing next to her is watching her with a sad sort of smile.

"So is it your Dad or your Mom on the ship?" she asks Jo at last.

"My Dad," Jo says. "He's the CMO. That stands for Chief Medical Officer, you know."

"I know," the lady says with a little smile. Her hair is spun gold, like the princess in the fairy tale, but there are shadows under her eyes deeper than Dad's, and she's so _thin_. "I used to be an engineer with Starfleet."

"Like Commander Scott?"

"I guess," she says, laughing.

"Who are you here to meet?" Jo asks, suddenly curious. It's just the bridge crew left now, and Jo is sure she's not related to – wait.

"My son," the lady says. "I'm Winona Kirk."

Jo jumps down from her perch on the railing and looks up at her. "You're Uncle Jim's Mom," she says. "I'm Joanna McCoy."

Mrs Kirk raises her eyebrows in surprise. "_Uncle _Jim?" she says, and then laughs. "Yes, I'm Jim's Mom."

"He spends Christmas with Dad and me," Jo says.

Mrs Kirk's mouth twists, a bit. "I'm glad he spends it with someone," she says softly, looking down at her hands, resting on the railing Jo was just sitting on. They're pretty hands, long and slender. They're Uncle Jim's hands.

"He brought me a Klingon blade weapon back from the Neutral Zone last year," Jo says.

Mrs Kirk laughs out loud. "So he hasn't changed much, then," she says, smiling widely and warmly, a nice smile. A lovely smile, even.

But in Jo's head, it's that first Christmas when Uncle Jim came home with Dad and Jo wanted to know why, intent as she had been on getting her Dad to herself, and Dad had lifted her onto his knee and said _Jo, honey, sometimes Jim needs someone to look after him, you know? _and Dad's not here right now, so Jo has to do it for him, because Uncle Jim brings her home Klingon knives and loves Dad as much as Jo herself does and never looks at her like he pities her for having such a terrible family life.

Joanna tucks her hands into her pockets. "I don't know," she says. "But. Look. He never talks about you."

Mrs Kirk actually flinches, as if Jo had slapped her. Jo feels bad for her then, but not bad enough to stop. "He never talks about you," she repeats. "And I know – I know all about Moms. OK? And if you hurt him, I'll _end_ you." She feels slightly ridiculous saying it, but she lifts her chin up anyway and meets Mrs Kirk's sky blue eyes head on, trying not to let the woman see that she's chewing on the inside of her cheek.

Mrs Kirk stares at her for a moment. Then, with a bit of effort, one hand curled tightly around the railing, she kneels down in front of her, so that she's looking up at Jo instead of the other way round, eyes open and guileless, and says gently, "Jo, I promise you I won't hurt him."

But Jo, young as she is, experienced as she is about Moms, can hear the unspoken "anymore" at the end of that sentence, even if Mrs Kirk doesn't realise it's there.


	9. Chapter 9

_This is a disclaimer._

(nine)

About a week after Jim moves into his shiny new apartment in San Francisco, The Ambassador comes to visit. (Jim's met a lot of Ambassadors over the course of the last year, but only one of them deserves the double capitalisation). He drops by completely unannounced, like he was just in the area and decided to visit an old friend, which is, of course, exactly what he's doing.

Jim invites him in, stumbling over his own words and moving his hands like a maniac because suddenly he doesn't quite know where they're supposed to be anymore, and offers him a drink.

The Ambassador smiles faintly. "Do you have any bourbon?"

Jim shakes his head at him. "Sulu and I already tried getting you drunk. It didn't end well."

The smile stretches wider. "Between yourself and Dr. McCoy, I managed to acquire a bit of a taste for it."

Jim can't help it; he laughs out loud. "Between you and me, Bones has been riding my ass about cutting back lately. And I've been riding his. There's only so long you can keep acting like a frat boy when you're the Captain of a spaceship."

"Commendable."

"Do we succeed?"

"For a given value of 'cutting back', Jim, yes."

Jim pours the bourbon into coffee mugs and makes The Ambassador take a seat at the kitchen counter that divides that room from what's supposed to be a living-cum-dining room, but so far hasn't made it past 'place to put boxes', of which there are depressingly few.

"So what brings you to this neck of the woods?"

The Ambassador takes a sip, puts his mug down with a solemn look. "Negotiations with the Federation. You may have noticed that things are a little... tense... right now."

"Of course. It took six months to persuade the Romulans to at least pretend to believe we're not about to drop any more of their ships through a black hole. The Klingon Empire is trying to take advantage of our current weakened state to re-negotiate certain treaties it wasn't too happy with back in the day, which means just about all of them, and Starfleet's reputation as a peacekeeping force for good in the universe is a little battered right now, because humans just don't have the kind of credibility in that area as Vulcans do."

"You learned that speech off by heart," The Ambassador says.

"My version had a lot more cusswords in it," Jim says cheerfully. "But Uhura threatened me with the business end of a stylus if I didn't edit them out."

"Intense dislike of and impatience with bureaucracy and paperwork," The Ambassador says. "Check."

"Are you comparing me to him?" Jim asks, and there's a note in his voice he was sort of hoping wouldn't be there, but it happens anyway.

The Ambassador leans forward a little, weight resting on his elbows. "Sometimes. It is difficult not to, Jim; you are both very alike and very different at the same time."

"That's an illogical sort of thing to say," Jim teases.

"Paradoxical," The Ambassador corrects. "That is not quite the same thing."

Jim toasts him with his mug, admitting defeat, and then goes straight in for the kill. "What kind of negotiations?"

The Ambassador looks, quite suddenly, at least twice as old as he really is. "The extent of our participation in the Federation, for one thing. We cannot heal ourselves and help expand the Federation at the same time. It is too much, and we are too badly hurt. For another, the amount of aid we have been receiving in rebuilding our civilisation. Too often over the past few months, it has come to be seen as interference more than anything else."

"It needs to be more... low key, you mean?"

"The resources the Federation offer us need to be under our direct control," The Ambassador says bluntly, and for a moment, Jim is silenced. He thinks about the Academy; about the students there, the instructors, the officers. He thinks, for the first time in too long, of Gaila and the look on her face whenever an instructor took it upon themselves to talk about her world and her culture as if they knew more about it than she did.

He tosses back the bourbon, anger burning in his throat, and reaches for the bottle again. The Ambassador seems to understand the gesture and the emotions it's hiding perfectly, and they sit in companionable silence for a while, sipping their drinks and feeling no need to look at each other, until at last The Ambassador says, in a quiet voice, "I was surprised to see you had rented an apartment here."

Jim glances up at him. "Where did he live?"

"When off duty? In Riverside."

A shudder runs through Jim that he can't control. He sees The Ambassador's eyes widen that tiniest of fractions, and thinks maybe now he understands a little more about those differences. There's Jim Kirk, and there's Jim Kirk.

"I see," he says quietly. And then, stretching out a hand across the table to touch Jim's wrist, deeply wrinkled olive-tainted skin, fingers blunt and once-strong that tremble a little until Jim's hand turns up on the countertop and their palms meet. Jim feels grief and heartache whispering at the edges of his mind, and then the brush of an all-encompassing love deeper than anything he used to believe himself capable of.

"I'm sorry, Jim," The Ambassador says softly. There's none of the hated pity there; just regret, and sorrow.

Jim flexes his fingers against The Ambassador's wrist, brief and light, because to grip that forearm the way he wants to is too intimate and too soon.

"Don't waste those emotions on me, Ambassador," he says lightly. "I'm the Captain of the fastest ship in the Federation Starfleet, and I have the best crew in the galaxy. Also, my First Officer is kinda hot."

The Ambassador actually laughs.


	10. Chapter 10

_This is a disclaimer._

(ten)

Uhura doesn't like Jim. This is a well-documented fact, tried and tested and proven beyond any doubt.

True, she's serving on the Enterprise, but that's because of ambition and Spock, or Spock and ambition, or possibly just Spock, but now that there isn't any hanky-panky going on there anymore it might just be ambition after all. Jim's not fool enough to ask after the exact reasons, though. It's safer for him if he stays out of her way and tries not to flirt with her too much.

(As a matter of fact, the not-flirting thing is going extremely well. He made a decision when they gave him his girl that he wouldn't... get involved... with anyone on his crew, and when Jim makes a decision, he sticks to it, so he doesn't even fake flirt with Uhura anymore, let alone flirt for real with anyone else on board.)

Taking all this into account, then, it's a bit of a shock to him when she shows up at his front door two days after The Ambassador's visit. Jim's fitting his new coffee table together, thinking he'd start small and move up to the big stuff, like the wardrobe and the bed and the dining room table, and he can't remember why he thought having one that size with all those chairs was a good idea for a guy who lives alone and isn't about to change that, but apparently he had a reason to when he signed the sales contract, because there they all are, waiting for him, and when the door chimes he yells "Come on in!" in a distracted way, half-expecting The Ambassador again, but it's Uhura instead.

"Whoa," she says, staring round. "That's a lot of cardboard."

"Apparently they're not allowed to beam inanimate objects into people's new living rooms," Jim says blankly. "Um. Uhura. Has anyone died? Is the _Enterprise_ still in one piece?"

He thinks she blushes, but there's no way to tell for sure, because this is Uhura and she doesn't do stuff like that, so it's probably just a figment of Jim's imagination.

"No and yes," she says. "It's. Personal."

"Forget it," Jim says.

She blinks. "What?"

"Forget it," he repeats. "I don't care what's going on with you and Spock, I'm not approving your transfer. Or his. You're the best, and I want the best, and I'll have you assigned to different shifts from now on if it's that bad even though I can't imagine that it is, but I'm not loosing either of you."

Uhura actually laughs, and Jim's reminded of the bar in Iowa and the split second when he thought _hell yeah she likes me_ right before he got the crap beaten out of him. "Captain," she says, and then, "Jim. It's not that. I promise. It's not work related at all."

Jim boggles. What other reason could Uhura possibly have to want to interact with him? Come to his apartment, even?

She's biting on her bottom lip, only sign of nervousness, and then she blurts it out. "My apartment's uninhabitable. Water damage or something, it's the whole block. And I can't go to my mother's, because my sister's getting married in two weeks, and if there's one thing I don't have the patience to do after dealing with that idiot landlord and the workmen and everything else, it's stand around like a doll and be fitted for a bridesmaid's dress."

Jim is still boggling. "So you come here? So you come here. Sulu is in New York, and Chekov's in Moscow, and Bones is down in Georgia with Jo, and no one knows where Scotty is although there's a good choice he hasn't left the ship yet and heading to Spock's would be too awkward."

"Actually, I thought of you first," Uhura says.

Jim wants to pinch himself, but that would be silly. And kinda melodramatic. "Well. You can. Help with the furniture?"

"I did bring a sixpack, just in case," she tells him, grinning a little.

So furniture it is; nuts and bolts and screws and instructions that are totally useless and a waste of precious paper, and when Uhura asks him about the sheer number of those damn chairs, Jim feels an immediate and irrational need to justify the illogical buying of excess furniture.

"Well, Bones doesn't have a place out here," he says. "And I've been spending Christmas at his house, with him and Jo, for years, so it's past time to return the favour. And Sulu's coming for the weekend right before we leave again. And one day I'm going to convince Mrs Chekov to let the kid stay with me for shore leave and _live_ a little. And there's Spock, of course, and –"

"In short," Uhura says, "the chairs are for us?"

It's so blindingly obvious that Jim can't make out why he was having so much trouble remembering it earlier on. He reaches past her and grabs two beers to try and hide the twist of – _something_ in his chest that she can surely see.

By midnight, they've set up a couch, two armchairs, a coffee table, a bookshelf, and six dining room table chairs. There's the table itself left, along with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers and three more bookshelves, because it turns out that most of Jim's possessions are either books or weird little knickknacks he's picked up on alien planets and wants to display, even though Uhura says they'll be hellish to dust.

There's a deckchair on Jim's balcony that's wide and comfortable and gets all the best late afternoon sunlight, and they share it, barefoot and platonic, which is a new one for Jim when with a pretty girl, ever so slightly drunk. The bottle of whiskey sits on the floor at Jim's side. He's lying down, head tilted back to look at the stars, while Uhura is sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, looking out at the city.

"What do you see up there?" she asks him softly.

"Home," he says. "You?"

"Up there? Life. New and bright and bold and different. Waiting for me. Down here? Home."

"I don't see much of anything down here."

"I've noticed that about you."

Silence for a while then. Jim pours them more booze, bottle clanking on the rim of their glasses, the sound of it obnoxiously loud in the night.

"Uhura?" he says. "Thanks for helping me with the furniture."

She takes a drink and turns to him. "It's Nyota."

"I knew that."

"But not because I told you."

"So we're good now?"

"It's not that I hated you," she says. "I hated the way you acted. Like – like you weren't worth me giving you the time of day, and you knew it, and didn't care."

"For a while," Jim says, "I wasn't."

"But you are, Jim. You always were."

"That's sweet of you to say, Nyota."

"Damn you, Jim," Uhura says, and she sounds frighteningly like McCoy, now. "Don't do that. It's not fair on yourself."

Jim knocks back the rest of his whiskey and sighs. "So I've been told," he murmurs, looking back up at the stars. Nyota lays a hand on his knee and keeps it there for a long time, and Jim slides into sleep like that, warmed by the whiskey and her touch and the slow, private, delicious revelation that's building in his chest.


	11. interlude

_This is a disclaimer._

**interlude, or, five phrases of the other Kirk's that come back to haunt Jim.**_  
_

_(security alert)_

"One of these days someone is going to have to explain to me the exact fault in the design of my girl that allows so many intruders to gain entrance to a brand new Constitution Class Federation Starship which happens to be the flagship of the _entire fucking fleet_," Jim explodes after Uhura gives the alarm. "This is my goddamn starship, not a Swiss cheese!"

*********

_(prime directive)_

Jim understands all about the prime directive. He's spent his whole life being poked and prodded by people who think they know what's best for him. What he needs to do with his life. How he should act, and talk, and live. He understands it, and he respects it, and he believes in it. Who was it that said revolutions couldn't be exported?

But there's non-interference, and there's sitting passively by and watching a whole world die a slow and terrible death in the name of peace and tranquility, and suddenly the prime directive doesn't seem so logical anymore.

"They're me," he says to Spock by way of explanation, and maybe his First gets it and maybe he doesn't. "They're me, back in that bar. And I'm – I'm daring them to do better."

*********

_(landing party)_

Someone needs to draw up a chart of all the times they've been ambushed and kidnapped on an away mission and cross-reference it with the names of the people on the landing party to see if there's anyone on the ship who has some exceptionally bad karma to work off in this life. And that someone is Jim.

It's his captainly duty, or something, and besides, there's nothing else to do right now. The bridge is so quiet he can hear Spock's eyebrows move, and Jim curls his body away from his First Officer a little and applies himself to the serious task of finding out whose fault it is, in karmic terms, that they keep getting kidnapped.

A few minutes later, he drops the datapad in disgust.

Figures.

*********

_(Kirk to Enterprise)_

"This is his fault, you know," Jim says. "I worked it out. Bad karma. He _did_ something. And now it's reflecting on me. Karmically speaking."

McCoy has no idea who Jim is talking about, but considering how hot his skin is and the way his body keeps twisting and how much blood is coating his hands at the moment, McCoy is just glad that Jim is still talking. About anything.

"I'm not sure 'karmically' is an actual word, Jim," he says.

Jim glares at him with fever bright eyes. "Is so. I just invented it."

He passes out when McCoy finally gets the bullet – the bullet, of all things, how pathetic and retro – out of his side, and when Scotty finally manages to make contact with them after another hour of hiding and waiting out the storm above their heads, the only thing McCoy can say is "Beam Kirk to the _Enterprise_. _Now_."

*********

_(steady as she goes)_

Sulu has no idea why Jim says it, and quite frankly it drives him nuts. How else is he supposed to fly her but steady, for crying out loud? She's the _Enterprise_. What, does Jim seriously think he's going to start doing loop-the-loops, like that time they were on shore leave and took up that ancient little plane of Admiral Pike's and there was that…

… yeah, OK. So maybe Jim has a point.


	12. Chapter 11

_This is a disclaimer._

_(eleven)_

The anonymous XO of the Yorktown turns out to be a woman: smart, gorgeous and unflappable. She reminds Jim of Spock, a little, in the way she studies him, the calm tones of her voice. Her hair is long and dark, tied back in an intricate bun, and her fingernails are painted a bright, blazing red.

She notices him looking at them.

"It's almost the only aspect of women's clothing that isn't covered in the regulations," she says, waving a hand at him, and Jim's stiff-backed and formal in his cadet's uniform but he's also the fucking crazy sonovabitch who saved the entire Federation, so he allows himself a grin.

"Look good on you, sir," he says.

Besides, a little flattery never hurt anyone.

Luckily for him, Number One tilts her head and smiles back – a little stiffly, as if she's not too used to it, but she smiles all the same. "Pointless, Kirk," she says. "I know your reputation. Although I have to admit I have always wondered how you found time to build it while you were speeding through the Academy command track at twice the speed of the other cadets."

Jim just hopes he doesn't look as chagrined as he feels. He's proud of that reputation, dammit.

Number One purses her lips briefly and folds her hands together, elbows propped on the table. From where Jim's standing, it looks like she's reading his mind, and he shifts imperceptibly, beginning to feel nervous. Beginning to worry about why she's sent for him.

And wow, she really can read his mind, because she puts her hands down on the table top and says, "I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Chri- Admiral Pike very much wanted to be the one to have this conversation with you. Unfortunately, the ceremony takes place tomorrow and your Dr McCoy insists he remains in bed and rests for as long as possible."

"Dr McCoy can be a little – overprotective, sir," Jim says.

"I'm grateful for it," Number One says.

Jim blinks, and then it dawns on him. "Ah," he breathes.

She smiles at him again, far fainter than before, and now he thinks he can see the deep etches in the skin around her eyes, left by worry, the tenseness in her hands, the impossibly straight set of her shoulders hiding her fear. "I'm grateful to you as well, Kirk," she says. "Thank you very much. And if you ever need anything, just ask."

Jim can feel himself going red; he honestly doesn't know what to say. It's worse than the odd instructor or visiting officer who'd come up to him to say _I served on the Kelvin_ and grip his hand like they were thanking him for something, because this time, he's not accepting the sentiment on his dead father's behalf. This time, he's not a placeholder, a replacement, a better-than-nothing.

And there is, really, only one possible response to her statement. "He dared me to," he says.

"I know," Number One says, eyebrows rising in amusement. And then she reaches into her desk and takes a sealed envelope out of a drawer. Holds it out to him.

He's probably staring at it like it's a live snake, because she shakes it at him, impatient. "Admiral Pike asked me to make sure you got it in private," she says. "Open it, Kirk. I haven't got all day."

Jim takes it from her with hands that feel strangely cold and numb, and if his fingers tremble when he tears it open Number One doesn't remark on it. There's a single sheet of paper inside it, how old-fashioned, _for the attention of Kirk, James Tiberius. Current rank Cadet (Command Track). Assignment upon graduation –_

The whole world stutters to a halt.

"Congratulations, Jim," Number One says. "Have a seat."


	13. Chapter 12

_This is a disclaimer._

_(twelve)_

"I don't mean to be the smug bastard who stands around saying 'I told you so' every time something goes wrong," Jim says, "but I told you so, you know."

Spock doesn't answer. Or if he does, it's in the form of an Eyebrow Movement or something similar in which case Jim is in no position to tell, because it's pitch dark in here and he's lying on his back with his hands tied underneath him and Spock, as far as he can tell, is lying across his knees.

Bones isn't going to like this one little bit. Neither's Uhura, Jim supposes.

Sulu, pressed up against Jim's other side, gives a slightly hysterical laugh. "It could be worse," he says. "They could want to burn us at the stake as heretics instead of just doing that ducking thing –"

"That ducking thing, as you so eloquently put it, will be no less fatal, Lieutenant," Spock says coolly. "It is estimated that less than a third of all the women who were forced to undergo the procedure in the Dark Ages of your Earth survived it."

Jim is squirming around in the damp, dirty straw, shoulders and head bumping against the wall behind him, trying to get at his boot, but the inaccuracy makes him look up all the same. "Middle Ages, Spock," he says. "Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance period after the spread of Protestantism. The Dark Ages were much earlier."

There's a moment's silence.

"I stand corrected," Spock says dryly. "When we return to the ship –"

"- You'll look it up and find out I'm right and be annoyed with yourself," Jim says blandly.

Sulu snickers.

"Silence in the peanut gallery," Jim orders, fingers closing triumphantly around his knife. Getting it into the right position to cut the ropes knotted around his wrists is a bit tricky, and Bones will kill him if he ever finds out how close Jim's coming to cutting his arteries open right now, but if they're going to get outta here and find their comms, he's gotta do it. "At least until you can tell me the salient points of Calvin's theory of predestination and explain why the Catholic church considered it heresy."

Sulu mutters something under his breath and knocks his knees into Jim's thighs and struggles a bit, pointlessly, as Spock tells him rather acidly, and Jim just knows his First Officer knows as much about the Catholic Church as he does about, say, strip clubs, which is to say he understands the idea behind it but finds it all completely illogical, which is why he hasn't bothered looking into it beyond that, which is why Jim knows more about it than he does. And then, with a snick, the ropes around Jim's wrist give way, and he whoops quietly.

"Yes! Spock, move –"

"I do not believe I can, Jim," Spock retorts and knocks his knees against the wooden crates framing his lower body to prove his point and after that everything's a bit of a mess, what with the struggling around and the cutting ropes in the dark and the cursing and the standing on top of each other and trying to be quiet so their guards don't hear, but in the end, Spock and Jim manage to pry open the rather rickety door to their cell, which is really little more than an outhouse, and they're free.

There are two guards; Spock nerve-pinches one while Sulu puts the other out of commission, and Jim goes for their comms and phasers.

All in all, it's been less than six hours since they beamed down in the first place.

"Put some kind of note in the files about the atmosphere screwing with starship sensors," Jim says to Spock and Scotty as they leave the transporter pads.

"Affirmative," Spock says. "Admiral Dawson may well benefit from the information that the planet is not uninhabited."

Jim snorts. "He probably wanted to build himself a holiday home there. I'm going to head up to the bridge -"

"Ah, Jim," Scotty says delicately. "You may prefer to shower first?"

Jim looks at him. Then down at himself, and realises for the first time what colour his gold tunic has assumed since being tied up and dragged around the village down there.

"That bad?" Sulu asks ruefully.

Scotty nods in silent commiseration.

"Ah," Jim says distantly. "Well, I suppose I'll go shower. Scotty, you've got the conn. Take us out of orbit. And, uh, Scotty – don't tell Dr McCoy."

Scotty grins at him. "Aye, sir."

"He is likely to find out about it relatively soon," Spock says.

"Yes," Jim agrees, "but if I'm lucky we'll be in public and he won't be able to yell at me."

Spock looks as amused as Spock ever looks, which Jim counts as a win. "One other thing," he says. Jim raises his eyebrows, curious. "That knife is certainly not Starfleet standard issue."

"Knife? What knife? Did you see any knives? I didn't see any knives. Except for the ones they were waving around."

"I suppose you keep it up your sleeve," Spock says with a touch of irritation.

"In my left boot, if you must know," Jim says promptly. "I've got a couple spares if you want one."

"I think," Spock says as they enter the turbolift, "I can mange without one. Thank you."


	14. Chapter 13

_This is a disclaimer._

___(thirteen)_

Jim isn't sure when exactly Ensign Kevin Riley had started to watch him so closely, but now that he's noticed it, it's like an itch between his shoulder blades, inescapable and never ending. Every time he turns around, the kid is looking at him, eyes narrowed and mouth tight.

Jim's got it down to two options: either he once screwed Riley's sister – or his girlfriend. He honestly cannot remember ever having a thing to do with the kid at the Academy, or during the Narada incident, or indeed at any other time since his promotion.

But there it is: Riley can't stop watching him, and it's making Jim nervous.

So one evening in the mess hall, Jim grabs his tray and wanders, seemingly aimless, over to the table the kid's sitting at, walking right past Bones and Spock, deeply engaged in their evening argument, and Uhura who's bent over a datapad. That alone is enough to tell most of the crew that something's going on, and a jerk of Jim's head clears the table of Riley's friends.

Riley has his back to him; he jumps in surprise when Jim sits down opposite him.

"Uh. Captain. I."

"You keep watching me," Jim says, and Riley goes a deep, burning red. "I'd like to know why."

"It – sir, it's nothing, I'm awful sorry, I just –" and he's practically wringing his hands now, eyes huge.

"You're making me nervous," Jim says, and lets a bit of amusement creep into his voice to calm the kid down. "Just tell me, OK? I mean, if you wanna fight, we can do that. In the gym, not for real, preferably, but we can do it."

Riley grips the edge of the table and gurgles with almost hysterical laughter. "I – _fight_ you – oh, God. Erm. Permisson to speak freely, sir?"

Jim snorts. "No, Riley, I came over here expecting you to jump to attention and start licking my boots."

Riley grins. That's better. He still looks nervous, uncertain, but it's better. "OK then. It's just. For the longest time, I wasn't sure if you, if I was remembering right. I mean, you've changed a lot since then."

That was about the last thing Jim was expecting. Did they have sex? No. Riley's seven or more years younger than he is, and Jim's a lot of things that most people would call immoral, but he rarely has… amours… with people who are so much younger than he is.

It's a thing he has. Don't ask.

"I don't understand," he says now, softly. "We've met?"

"You remember," Riley says confidently. "Like I said, I wasn't sure at first, but it was you, I know it. You pushed me into that closet when the guards came and –"

He breaks off there, but that's enough, because Jim does remember: the darkened halls, the shouting in the distance, the look on Aunt Sally's face when she shoved him away and told him to run, the frightened little boy crouching in a corner, heavy tramp of boots getting closer, _in here quick don't make a sound hide, hurry!_ and the pain bursting across his face when the leader backhanded him into the wall, sinking into black while they dragged the little boy out, waking in the audience chamber in Tommy's arms, a quivering terrified wreck of a kid –

Jim puts his hands flat on the tabletop, preemptive strike before they start to shake. It's another minute or two before he can speak.

"Kevin Riley," he says, and smiles a bit. "I never did find out your name."

"No," Kevin says, and his mouth tilts up in an approximation of an answering smile. God, they're so screwed up. "But I. I thought about you a lot."

Jim meets his eyes solemnly. "Me, too," he says, and nods at him.

Maybe they can do this, Kevin and him. Just maybe.


	15. Chapter 14

_This is a disclaimer._

_(fourteen)_

Spock has never been an enthusiastic participant in shore leave, but even he enjoys the Enterprise's stopover at Libra XII. The colony is quite large, the city spacious, clean and modern. It was Nyota who convinced him to come down to the planet with the rest of the crew, but Spock leaves them to their amusements before long and strikes out, as Captain Kirk would have said, on his own, preferring solitary wandering to the constant pressure of all that 'togetherness' with the same people (another word of Captain Kirk's). The weather is good, the temperature pleasantly warm even to a Vulcan, and the colonists are friendly.

Spock seldom truly needs to stop someone and ask for directions, but it feels like such a lazy, off-duty thing to do that he does anyway, with a spark of emotion that might, just might, be described as _rebelliousness_.

He pointedly does not dwell on the logic of this.

There are several shopping areas, of course: pedestrian areas and arcades and even a market, wooden stalls overflowing with garishly coloured scarves and homemade jewellery or decorative statuettes. _Knick knacks_, his mother had called them. There is one set of candlesticks that catches Spock's eye: tall, graceful wood, exquisitely carved, polished to a gleam, the sort of thing she would have liked. The sort of thing he would have purchased for her, once, as a souvenir or birthday gift.

He leaves the market rather quickly, mouth pinched tight.

It's not until he turns his steps to the rendezvous point, prepared to return to the ship and his work, that something truly interesting happens.

He bumps into Kirk.

This in itself is not 'that big of a deal', to use the common phrase. What makes the encounter interesting is the fact that Kirk is mostly hidden behind a large cardboard box, upon which are piled no less than three separate plastic bags, all seemingly stuffed with rectangular building blocks as far as Spock can see, and the way Kirk is carrying the… the _edifice_… makes him look much shorter than he actually is, a small boy staggering under the weight of his mother's groceries.

"Spock!" he says, when he realises who he's just collided with, and for some reason, he goes red.

"Your powers of observation are remarkably intact, Captain, considering the way you usually spend your shore leave," Spock says blandly.

Kirk grins a bit, but he's still flushed, and he shifts his load the tiniest fraction, almost nervously. "Well, you know. Time for a change, new leaf, _et cetera_ – ah, hell!"

Something has fallen out of one of the plastic bags – the top one, apparently. Spock bends to pick it up while Kirk is cursing pointlessly and trying to think of a way to retrieve the object without sending the entire pile cascading onto the ground.

It is a book. A paperback, in fact, a little worn-looking, but intact and in good condition. Spock blinks at the title in surprise: _A Tale of Two Cities_, by Charles Dickens.

"Ah yes," Kirk says. "The good old _unbelievable-you-mean-Jim-Kirk-can-read_ look." Spock recognises his tone. It is his most irritating one, hard and ruthless and utterly isolated. Nyota once called it Kirk's ice field voice, because, she said, it reminded her of sunlight on an icicle. Bright, shining, but sharp enough to slit your throat.

Nyota, for all her numerous admirable qualities, has a penchant for melodrama that makes Spock shudder.

"I confess to a certain confusion as to why you would go out and spend –" if all of that pile he is carrying consists of books of approximately the same size as the Dickens volume, there are sure to be approximately than fifty of them in Kirk's arms right now – "over seven hundred credits on a selection of literary works we are sure to have stored in the ship's library, Captain."

Kirk huffs. There is no other word for it. "I know we've got them in there, Spock. But space is a big place, you know, and missions are long, and I like to read books. Real, honest to God paper books. It's a vice I have."

Spock raises an eyebrow. "I was under the impression most of human society considers it a virtue, Captain."

Kirk shrugs one shoulder. "Most, but not all. I mean, when I saw those bookstores in that arcade back there – this is the first time in my life I've ever had the mo-" and there he breaks off, with an odd little noise that is almost a gasp, as if he had revealed too much, forgotten himself in some way, by speaking as he did.

Spock considers him a moment. There is an instant when the room in his father's house that had been his flashes into his mind, complete with neatly organised bookshelves and a mother who teased him about alphabetizing – but it is not logical to act on the prompting of such a memory, and so he does not.

"Permit me to assist you with them, Jim," he says instead. "Vulcan strength is, after all, superior to a human's."


	16. Chapter 15

_This is a disclaimer._

___(fifteen)_

It is a well known fact on board the starship _Enterprise_ that Jim Kirk is as heterosexual as it is possible to be. It is a well known fact that Lieutenant Uhura has a tragic past, and that Dr. McCoy is going out with Yeoman Barrows, and that Lieutenant Sulu has a crush on Ensign Chekov who in turn only has eyes for the Captain who is totally oblivious to all this because of said rampant heterosexuality and Perkins from Engineering swears blind that the UST and the misery on the bridge is _palpable_ when they're all on duty together.

It is a well known fact that each and every one of the bridge crew have had sex in the command chair at some point, and that the Captain locked the delegation from Pelegius IX in a briefing room for two days until they sorted out their differences because he'd seen it on some old TV show, and that every Thursday night, the main bridge crew shuts down a corridor on E-Deck and uses it as a bowling alley with the Captain's full knowledge and consent.

It is also a well know fact that Janice Rand and Christine Chapel are having a passionate affair that is doomed to failure because they're both hopelessly in love with someone else, and that Chief Engineer Scott has an actual distillery hidden away somewhere in the bowels of the ship, and that the Captain keeps a phaser under his chair on the bridge and a knife in his left boot, and that Commander Spock can beat him at darts and that Lieutenant Uhura has been known at various times to _knit_.

And finally, it is a well known fact that the Captain and Dr. McCoy have dinner together every week on Thursdays, without fail, come hell or high water.

The Captain drops into a seat opposite Dr. McCoy with a tray full of steak; the Doctor gives him a baleful look.

"Jim, heart attack," he says, waving his fork at the tray in front of him. "Heart attack, Jim. Thought I should introduce you; you're sure to become intimately acquainted sometime soon."

"Killjoy," the Captain says lazily. "So, you and Barrows, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," McCoy says blandly. "I hear the sex is excellent."

Not even the gossip mill is entirely sure what to make of the way they both fall about laughing.


	17. Chapter 16

_This is a disclaimer._

_(sixteen)_

Somewhere in between filthy Iowan bar floors and the gleaming bridge of the Enterprise, Jim has become something of a hedonist, and it's all Nyota's fault. Well, Gaila had bought him a pair of black silk boxers once, but at the time Jim had (privately) scorned them as a waste of money and a shameless indulgence in a world in which he perpetually had too little of one and never a real chance for the other.

And then they had stopped for shore leave at Starbase Six a few months ago, and Jim had invited his senior staff to dinner, on him, a _thank you_ and a _well done_ and a _damn, we're awesome_. Nyota had chanced to pass by his quarters at the same time he was leaving them, and she'd stopped short and frowned at him.

"You're wearing jeans," she'd said.

Jim shrugged. "It was either these or my uniform," he'd replied, too busy pulling his jacket on to see the look on her face: surprise, and then speculation, and then determination.

The next day, she'd taken him shopping.

McCoy ribs him every now and then about the immaculately tailored suits and the soft-as-butter leather boots, but Jim just puts on a lofty expression and pretends he's above replying to such plebian insults. He picks up the art of dressing well in much the same way he picked up the art of being a starship Captain: wholeheartedly and by some hidden, inexplicable instinct.

Besides, Pike approves of it. "Makes you look older than you are," he'd said when Jim had shown up for their dinner together in a black suit and a crisp white shirt. "Steadier, too."

Jim is too sharply aware of his own shortcomings as a Captain – his lack of experience, his impulsiveness, his tendency to search for more creative solutions to various problems than the answers outlined in Starfleet regulations – to dismiss anything that might give him an edge over his doubters. If dressing well gives them the illusion that he's more mature than they think, he'll spend his entire pay on clothes for the next year or more.

And, well. The smooth materials just feel good against his skin. But he doesn't admit to that in public, any more than he does to the massages. Or the silk sheets.


	18. Chapter 17

_This is a disclaimer._

_(seventeen)_

Pike supposes it was inevitable. You can't promote a twenty five year old to the Captaincy of the flagship of the fleet without generating a hell of a lot of media interest in said Captain and everything he does. And you can't send that same young Captain out to head the relief efforts for the famine on Ephesus without generating even more media interest. The handsome young hero come to save the settlers –

And then some asshole hacked into what was supposedly the most secure database in Starfleet, and within twenty four hours the whole galaxy knew that Kirk – that Jim –

Pike finds him in his office, hunched behind a stack of paperwork, clutching a cup of coffee that looks strong enough to burn a hole in the table top.

"They'll catch the guy who spilled it," he says without preamble.

Jim meets his eyes. He looks surprisingly calm for a man who is having his entire past torn to pieces in the media in front of a galaxy full of curious onlookers. "Is this before or after they've decided whether sending me to Ephesus was an excellent way to help me overcome my demons, or a dick move that will incapacitate me for years to come?"

Pike finds himself rearranging the strategy he'd laid out for this conversation, because Jim doesn't sound hurt, or bitter, or angry. He sounds _amused_.

That's a good sign, as far as Chris is concerned.

"Oh, I think they'll be fighting over that when you retire," he says, grinning at him. Jim smirks back.

"Excuse me for ten minutes. I really need to get this report out."

Pike nods at him, and pokes around in the mess on Jim's desk until he draws out a paperback from under a datapadd. It's a biography of Elizabeth I of England.

"Chris Chapel gave it to me," Jim says absently. "Now there's a chick I want on my crew."

"Chapel, or Eliza?" Pike asks, thumbing through it.

"Both. D'uh."

"You should be more careful with these, you know – books cost a lot these days."

"Not so much off Earth. People in the colonies sell 'em cheap now that they're able to afford datapadds."

There's a long, companionable silence then, until Jim sends off his report and puts his stylus down. He's still holding the coffee cup.

"So. What did you want to talk about?"

Chris puts the book back where he found it and shrugs a bit. "Wanted to make sure you were OK," he says. "Not, uh, _emotionally compromised_." It's become a joke, that one, in the giant dysfunctional family that makes up the _Enterprise_ crew and the people who love them, but this time, Pike means it.

Jim shakes his head. "I was all right," he says. "I mean, it wasn't good. Of course it wasn't. People were dying." There's a distant look in his eyes and a tightness to his mouth. "But I could do something. You know? I could help. I wasn't cowering in a corner anymore like a frightened child –"

"You were a frightened child," Chris breaks in harshly.

Jim keeps his face expressionless. "Not good enough," he says. "For some things… s'not good enough."

"Jim," Pike says. "No bullshit. Are you OK?"

Jim shakes his head, once. "Not really. Not yet."

The quiet emphasis he puts on the last word is enough for Chris.


	19. Chapter 18

_This is a disclaimer._

_(eighteen)_

She's paler than Jim remembers, and there are dark bruises under her eyes. There's an aching certainty in his chest that they've been there for two years, and a stab of guilt runs through him that he couldn't do this for her sooner.

"Reporting for duty, sir," she says, and is her voice a little hoarser than he remembers? He's not sure.

"Good to see you again," Jim says softly, ignoring the formalities in favour of holding his hands out to her over the table top, palms up in offering.

Gaila takes them. Her skin feels rougher than it did, two years of actual work in Engineering leaving calluses that the Academy hadn't prepared her for.

Sometimes, Jim thinks the Academy hadn't prepared any of them for anything.

"Thank you for this," she says.

On a sudden impulse, he draws her hands up to his face and presses a kiss to her knuckles, an outdated, _olde worlde_ gesture that makes her smile.

"It's against regulations, but you and Nyota are welcome to bunk together if that'll help," he says.

Gaila squeezes his fingers, laughing. "She told you her first name! When? Why? Tell me everything!"

Jim does.


End file.
